Rose Tyler and The Trouble With Venetians
by Martha and Squirrel
Summary: The TARDIS is stranded for a few days. An accident in the Library provides more than enough adventure for The Doctor, Rose, Jack and some unexpected guests. Writen for the Tardisficathon on tumblr.
1. Chapter 1

AN: This is part of the Tardisficathon – The room prompt, given by mirandariver, was The Library.

This story is set after the events of "The Doctor Dances".

I am late with this submission - I hope I am forgiven; it has been a very long time since I tried to write. Well, here's Chapter one... more should follow (The idea turned out to be more than just a one-shot. You can blame the inspirational influence of my muse, Squirrel, for that!). It will turn into a bit of a comedy jaunt as well as a bit a fandom cross-over explosion. You don't need to know about those other fandoms though... I hope that doesn't hamper anyone's enjoyment. ^Martha.

"Where do we want to go next then?" The Doctor asked as the music stopped. Not wanting to give anyone a chance to think too deeply about what he'd just done.

Rose was still trying to catch her breath, so was pleased when Jack was the one to respond.

"Does this thing have a random setting?" he asked.

"Yes, the _TARDIS_ does." The Doctor said, flipping a switch on the console.

"Great." Jack grinned. "Never a good idea for a rogue time agent to be too predictable."

Rose plopped down onto the jump seat as the Doctor finished pulling levers and pressing buttons, taking the TARDIS into the time vortex.

The Doctor watched the readouts on the monitor but didn't really take notice of what he was seeing. He'd been decidedly perturbed by the revelation that Rose didn't think of him as a man, and that she saw him asexual. His decision to dance with her was probably his first attempt to tell someone he fancied them in at least 750 years.

The Doctor and Jack come from a time when notions of orientation were considered rather quaint. When he made a quip about which one of them Jack wanted to dance with Rose, seeing the humour from her twentieth century perspective, had giggled happily.

Rose was from a time where some still raised their eyebrows over encounters between members of the same gender. How would she feel about sleeping with an alien? Did he want to have sex with Rose Tyler? She was barely out of her teens and he was north of nine hundred.

Sitting in that hospital in 1941 it had dawned on him that there were no Time Lords left to chastise him if he were to take advantage of a human. Should you entertain the notion of doing something wrong just because you knew you could not get caught? Did he really think it would be wrong? Did it matter at all if Rose was far more interested in Jack?

The Tardis made a loud, grinding moan, drawing him out of his thoughts. He gave the bicycle pump, embedded in the console, a few cursory compressions, just incase there was a buildup of pressure somewhere. The TARDIS screeched even louder.

There was a violent lurch and Rose almost slipped right off the jump seat. Jack was thrown into one of the metal railings. Luckily, he gripped onto it tightly and managed to ride out the bucking jolts the TARDIS made as she struggled to bring them to their next destination.

The lights dimmed for a moment and then flared brightly back to life.

Rose squinted. "What's going on?" She called in the direction of the Doctor.

"She's struggling to land." He called over the grinding noises. "The explosion of Jack's ship might have disrupted something." He tried to get to the other side of the console, clinging to it as the deck plates rolled and bucked beneath them. "I can't be sure right now. Just trying to get her down."

Five minutes of loud complaint from the TARDIS, its three inhabitants hanging on to anything fixed in the control room that they could reach, and then a soft bump brought eerie silence.

Rose exhaled loudly and tried to stand up, she kept her grip on one of the railings though, just in case.

"Rough landing," Jack said, smirking at the Doctor

"You try flying an infinite ship through the time vortex and see how you get on." The Doctor bit back. "That vortex manipulator is nothing more than a motorcycle in traffic." He added derisively.

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Jack touched his wrist fondly.

"Now, now, boys…" Rose grinned as she made her way to the doors on slightly unsteady legs. "Let's see where we've ended up… Mars? Vulcan? Earth with the dinosaurs roamnig?"

"What's with all the Star Trek this week, Rose?" The Doctor grumbled quietly, she had been obsessed with Spock while they were on Earth. He yanked the monitor back in front of his face to check on the TARDIS. "Wherever we are, we'll be staying for a while." He informed them. "The TARDIS is going to need some time to recover after that landing.

Rose pulled open the Tardis door and her grin faded. "Errr – this doesn't look like much of an adventure." She pulled a face and turned to the Doctor.

The monitor was flickering and unresponsive, the Doctor trotted down the gantry to join Rose at the door. "You're right" He sniffed a couple of times "Smells toxic."

The doors had opened to reveal nothing but a swirling mass of gas. It was almost offensively purple. Rose liked purple, so that was really saying something.

Jack was peering over their shoulders. "When you say random, you really mean random." he kidded.

"Next time I'll leave you in your exploding ship, shall I?" The Doctor lifted an eyebrow teasingly at the younger man.

"So, are we stuck in here?" Rose looked up at the Doctor.

"Yep." He turned to go back to the console. "I'll try to get the scanner back online first so we can see where we've ended up, but until then we'll have to stay put. For all we know that gas could eat right through our flesh the second we step outside the doors."

"Right, staying put it is then." Rose closed the doors, followed the Doctor and plopped back on the jump seat again to watch him work. "How long d'ya think it'll take?"

"Dunno. Could be here for days."

"Hate sittin' around waiting," Rose pouted, "always used to take a book on the bus to work cos I couldn't sit still with nothin' to do for too long." She picked at the weathered upholstery of the jump seat.

"Stop that." The Doctor swatted her hand away. "Go find yourself a book then."

"I didn't bring any with me." Rose looked up at him, injustice all over her face.

"Then go down to the library." The Doctor suggested, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

"There's a library?" She was totally incredulous.

Rose Tyler could be counted on to always wander off if they were on a dangerous planet, or end up floating across London tethered to a barrage balloon if they were on Earth in 1941, but when aboard the TARDIS she always stuck by his side. If she wasn't in her room then she was like his shadow.

Not that the Doctor was complaining.

"Can't remember the last time I was in a library." Jack strode over. "Point us in the right direction, Doc, and we'll leave you to your repairs."

The Doctor was sure that Jack understood Rose was off limits, he wouldn't have stood back and let the Doctor insist on dancing with her if he hadn't. When Jack had stood rooted to the spot as the Doctor held out his hand to Rose, the Doctor had known Jack would be a firm friend. Still, something about sending them off alone together made him uneasy.

"The TARDIS can make a start on her own." He trotted out of the console room and into the corridor. "I'll take you, it might have moved since I last went down there."

"Moved?" Jack frowned, following on the Doctor's heals

"The ship's alive." Rose told him, smiling that wide, dazzling smile as the trio headed deeper into the TARDIS.

The Doctor liked the pride in Rose's voice and on her face. She liked his ship.

The Library wasn't where the Doctor had left it. The TARDIS had a tendency to put the rooms used most closest to the console room. The kitchen and bathrooms were always near the console room. The wardrobe room was usually close at hand when he had a companion on board as were the sleeping quarters, especially when his companions were human. Humans needed much more sleep than Gallifreyans. Other rooms and old archived versions of these rooms tended to drift further out as they were used less and less. The squash courts were always a nightmare to find and the bowling alley had been known to go missing entirely.

They eventually found the library near some archived bathrooms and a millinery workshop that the Doctor couldn't remember seeing before.

He pushed open the double doors with a flourish and waltzed inside, spinning back around to see the looks on the faces of Rose and Jack. He wasn't disappointed.

Rose hardly noticed the Doctor's manic grin as her lips parted company and her eyes were drawn upwards to a ceiling that simply wasn't there. The tall bookcases on all sides rose like the walls of impossibly tall skyscrapers. In front of them were the ends of many bookcases, holding rows of shelves that stretched of farther than she could see.

The rectangular space in front of them held a desk with four chairs around it, a monitor and a couple of lamps. To the left of the door was an enormous fireplace, an armchair on either side and a sofa facing the hearth. There were a few cupboards and shelves dotted about that held things other than books, but the small space in front of them seemed almost ridiculous in comparison to the vastness of the Doctor's collection.

"Is it... everything?" Rose asked in a much smaller voice than she'd intended to use.

"No." The Doctor sagged just a tad. "Just a selection of my favourite things from wherever I go... guidebooks to a few places I'd still like to go, references to me seem to end up here too. I think the TARDIS does a certain amount of collecting herself." He walked over to the monitor on the desk ahead of them. "Just everything written by humans would take up an entire planet!" He told them.

"For all I know, this place is the size an entire planet." Rose said.

"Compensating for something?" Jack winked.

The Doctor chose not to indignify that remark any further with a response. Instead he ploughed straight into telling them how to look up what they wanted and then get directions to find it.

"We've got books, films, television, a few tanks of fiction mist, there's even some vinyl and a record player somewhere."

"Fiction mist?" Rose stared at the Doctor.

"Yeah, I think there's some in the storage tanks in the back." He pointed.

"What's fiction mist when it's at home?"

"Oh… it's like a mild, programmable hallucinogen." He said, but Rose still looked confused. It was easy to forget that there was so much she had never encountered. "It lets you live out a story. Actually see it happening around you, interact with the characters and everything."

"Like a holodeck in Star Trek?"

"Yes. But totally different." The Doctor grinned, happy that she got it.

"Right... I think I'll stick with a good book for now." Rose nodded.

The Doctor hovered over the monitor, ready to input her request. "So - what do you want to read, Rose?" He grinned expectantly.

"Choosing something new is so hard. I've still got a total book hangover from Harry Potter."

"A book hangover?" Jack's eyebrows lept up.

"You know, when you're still so caught up with one story that you can't move onto the next one." She clarified.

"Oh, sounded much more fun than that." He winked.

"Harry Potter?" The Doctor asked. "You can't have read them all, not when I picked you up in 2005."

"I actually hadn't quite finished Order of the Phoenix." She admitted.

"Well then, we'll have to see about that!" The Doctor prodded at the monitor a few times and then strode off. "This way." He called to Rose. She and Jack hurried after him into the towering rows of books.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Thanks for the reviews on Chapter 1, I really appreciate them. I took the idea for fiction mist from a line at the beginning of "Silence In The Library" when the Tenth Doctor and Donna arrive at The Library planet: "Fifty first century. By now you've got holovids, direct to brain downloads, fiction mist, but you need the smell. The smell of books, Donna. Deep breath."

~o~o~

Rose had taken the book back to her room, made a cup of tea and changed into her pyjamas. She could only read these books for the first time once so she didn't want to be distracted by the Doctor and Jack. She had left them competing with each other in a conversation of quotes, each trying to catch the other out with a reference the other didn't know. Rose had wandered off, not sure if the two men were showing off for her benefit or flirting with each other.

She had snuck back to the Library later that evening and retrieved the sixth book from the shelves, sure it would be alright as this book was now out in her time, especially since the Doctor had taken her home a whole year late after their first adventures in the TARDIS.

Rose was a little disappointed that the Doctor hadn't lingered in the Library. She liked the thought of having some company while she read. It wasn't until she found the library empty that she realised she'd been thinking about sitting in front of that huge fireplace with him, maybe even having him read her a little of the next book. There was no sign of Jack either, so Rose left the room with one last indulgent glance at the sofa by the fire.

Rose discovered the whereabouts of the Doctor as she passed the console room on her way back to bed. He was lying under the deck plates, lots of wires dangling in his face, his sonic screwdriver held between his teeth. She wondered if she should offer him a cup of tea, but he looked so absorbed, almost content, alone with his ship, that Rose decided to leave him undisturbed.

Rose had to admit that books were a big weakness. Once she started a story, there was very little that could distract her. She spent most of the night and the following day reading Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince. Now Rose was headed back to the library, the book clutched to her chest, still thinking over what she'd read. Her slippers scuffed softly along the corridor. She was so lost in thought that at one point she doubted she had gone the right way and had to double back to check. Rose hated the thought of getting lost in the TARDIS. It felt more like her home every day but the Doctor could be very vague about how big it actually was.

When she arrived at the Library, the Doctor was sitting at the large wooden desk, he did not have a book though, he was just staring intently at the monitor screen.

"What ya doin'?" Rose asked as she walked around behind the Doctor to see what he was so captivated by.

"Brushing up on my Spock." He turned and smiled warmly at her, taking in her very different appearance. He had never seen Rose dressed for bed before. She was wearing a fluffy dressing gown, but he could see that underneath she was wearing a little vest top with thin straps over her bare shoulders. She couldn't possibly be wearing a bra. He looked away, surprised by his own train of thought. He was no stranger to attraction, but allowing himself to acknowledge his attraction to a human was quite new, even if he was only acknowledging it to himself.

Rose laughed. He was watching an old episode of Star Trek. Probably the only episode she could remember clearly - the one with the little furry Tribble creatures. The screen was paused as Captain Kirk was about to sit on one.

"Where's Jack?" She asked, trying to cover up how nice it was to think she influenced the Doctor's viewing choices.

The Doctor's smile slipped and he turned to look back into the rows of books. "He went to look for biographies..." he turned back to her, grin firmly back in place, "but I may have sent him more in the direction of pornography." He looked thoroughly pleased with himself.

Rose swatted him on the shoulder with the heavy tomb that was Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince, wondering briefly what might be in a nine hundred year old alien's porn stash. Was it just her imagination or had the Doctor stopped trying to hide the fact that he was a sexual being since they'd met Jack?

"I'm going to go and grab the next one." She waved the book at him. "You're sure it's OK for me to read it ahead?" She chewed her bottom lip, awaiting permission to read the seventh and final Harry Potter book.

"As long as you promise not to spoil JK's story if we go back to Earth before it's out." He put on his best stern face.

"Wouldn't dream of it." Rose grinned, showing off all those dazzling teeth, and scuffed back into the stacks, retracing the steps they had taken to find JK Rowling's extensive shelf.

The Doctor watched her go. His Rose, reading his books. She liked his library. He almost forgot it was here sometimes, but having seen the wonder on her face when they walked in, he couldn't understand why he didn't spend more time here. He supposed that it wasn't often he was forced to stay still long enough that he had time to visit. They ricocheted from one adventure to the next, never stopping to just catch their breath. Never stopping to think really.

It wasn't until Rose returned and dropped into the chair opposite his that the Doctor realised he had been sat looking at the paused image of William Shatner almost sitting on a Tribble for several minutes.

"How's the TARDIS?" Rose asked.

"Getting there slowly." He said, his affection for his ship thick in his voice. "I managed to get the scanner back online. We're on a little planetoid just outside Earth's solar system. It's still orbiting your sun but it's too small for anyone to take any notice. It's still best that we don't go outside - we'd freeze to death before we'd got far enough to check if the bulb on top of the TARDIS needs changing."

The doctor pushed the monitor he was looking at so that they could both see it. "Got an image of a enormous rock creature come up on one the sweeps." He tapped the screen a few times and showed her a fuzzy, pixelated, and overwhelmingly purple picture.

Rose supposed that if she squinted and leaned back a bit, it might look like a life form. "Doesn't look much like it's alive."

The Doctor harrumphed and spun the monitor back around, switching back to his Star Trek episode.

"How much longer do y'think we'll be stuck here?" Rose fingered the spine of the last book - she was in danger of running out of reading material.

"A couple of days I reckon, the TARDIS has to grow a new inertial stabiliser. Since the war I've not been able to get spare parts so we'll just have to wait."

Rose nodded and flipped her book open eagerly, her bottom lip held by her top teeth in anticipation.

Jack chose that moment to emerge from somewhere to the Doctor's left and sit heavily at the desk. "Phew!" He exclaimed. "Took me forever to find biographies." He sighed.

"I'll bet!" Rose grinned, looking up at the Doctor.

The Doctor winked at her and Rose laughed. He loved that sound.

"Casanova," Jack said, holding up a book with his finger marking a page partway through, "fascinating fellow."

"I know," the Doctor said absently, his attention back on his episode of Star Trek, "he owes me 12 denari."

Rose shook her head. Out of all the mad adventures she'd had with the Doctor, why did these quiet evenings in seem so bizarre? It was probably the stillness. She and the Doctor were always running to their next adventure or crashing exhausted into their beds after their last one. It was no wonder she had never realised there was a library on board the TARDIS - who would ever find time for this when there was all of time and space outside?

"Are you watching that with no sound on?" Rose suddenly asked the Doctor, realising that he was watching TV but she couldn't hear it.

"No, it's channelling the sound into a sonic implant in my teeth." The doctor opened his mouth and pointed at one of his back molars.

"Weird." Rose peered into the Doctor's mouth, but she couldn't see any sonic implant.

Her eyes only broke away from his mouth when he spoke again. "I can put one in for you, if you like." The Doctor said casually. "Then you can listen to music, watch TV, talk on your phone, all in private."

"How does it work?"

"Vibrations." Jack said, winking.

Rose felt a blush prickle at her cheeks and scrambled for something to say. "Wouldn't that make your teeth fall out?" She asked.

Jack and the Doctor laughed. Rose felt like she had just drooled on her nightie. She returned to the first lines of the last Harry Potter book, hoping to soon be lost in another story.

Rose hadn't been reading for even five minutes when a grinding moan broke the library's silence. The three inhabitants at the desk looked up at each other, startled. The Doctor started to rise from his chair, but then a loud bang tore through library.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: Once again, thanks for the reviews. I really appreciate your thoughts on the story, whatever they might be. I think the Doctor always fancied Rose, it's just not something he's used to facing with a companion.

~o~o~

Giacomo Casanova awoke with his head on his arms, slumped over a table. His head shot up with a start, realising that he was not in the same place he had been when he fell asleep. Far from it. He had fallen asleep on a hard cot, stuffed with straw, in a Venice prison. He now found himself in a comfortable leather armchair, slumped over a table, in what appeared to be the largest library he had ever seen.

He was no longer alone either. There was another man there, sitting to his left, sleeping in a similar fashion with his head resting on his arms in front of him. This man was dressed very strangely, in a lime green shirt. Casanova looked down at himself and realised that he was in no position to criticise this man's attire. He himself was dirty and ragged from months of imprisonment, his hair was a fright, and he had a wild amount of stubble about his face and neck.

He needed to establish where he was, how he had got out of jail, and how he was going to take advantage of the situation to reach his love before she was forced to marry another man. He was certainly in the right place for learning. He was surrounded by books on shelves that reached up to a ceiling that he could barely see. He would have said that it went on forever if he had not known that to be impossible.

He reached out to wake the man next to him and enquire as to what was going on, but something stopped him. Casanova's confidence simply escaped him when he was without the armour of a good suit and a clean shaven face.

It didn't take him long to find his way out of the gargantuan library. The doors didn't lead him outside, as he had hoped, but into a strange metal corridor. It lacked any sort of defining features to use as a landmark that might help him find his way back. Casanova decided to keep walking straight and see where he ended up.

He passed several doors as he went down the passage. It was eerily quiet, he could see no evidence that anyone else, other than the sleeping man in the library, was around. He decided to chance having a look inside one of the rooms. The moment he made to approach one, the door slid upward and a light flickered on inside like magic.

It was a bathroom, but unlike any bathroom he had ever seen before. He walked inside, his mouth hanging open. He had only just been thinking that he wished he could have a bath and a shave, and here he was in the most splendid bathroom he could imagine. In fact it was probably more splendid than he could imagine, and he had visited a fair few bathrooms in his time - bathrooms of the richest of the rich - who else could afford a bathroom, after all? He set about rummaging in the cupboards and started running water in the huge bath tub.

After a bath and a shave he draped one of the large robes he'd found around his himself and kicked his dirty clothes into a corner - he couldn't face putting them back on. He would really feel much more comfortable naked than wearing those smelly rags.

He found some scissors in a drawer under the mirror and set about butchering his wild mane of hair. It actually didn't look nearly as frightful now that it was clean and not accompanied by the beginnings of a beard. He rather liked the way it stood up in a purposeful sort of mess - it made him feel very devil-may-care.

Remembering that he had no idea where he was or how he got there, Casanova decided to venture out again - maybe he would come across someone that could enlighten him. Wandering about lost and half naked had to be better than prison.

He looked in a few more rooms, one appeared to be filled with nothing but hats, he didn't linger there - a hat wasn't going to make much difference to his state of undress, besides it would detract from his splendid new hair.

A while later, feeling like he'd walked for miles and looked in a thousand rooms containing increasingly bizarre things, Casanova came to a door that opened to reveal a circular space, softly lit and dominated by a spiral staircase that weaved its way up through racks and racks and racks of clothes.

There were styles from every era of history and more besides - some of the items he wouldn't even know how to wear. A lot of it was downright hideous too. Among other things, he managed to find a scarf so long that even he, one of the tallest men in Venice, would have tripped over it.

After finding the closest thing to a decent suit, shirt and what he supposed passed for a necktie in this wardrobe of the damned, he shrugged out of the bath robe and started to get dressed.

Once fully clothed, he crammed his hands in the pockets of his trousers and admired the finished article in a vast collection of mirrors that somehow gave him a full three hundred and sixty degree view of his person. It was no wonder all the ladies liked his backside, He smirked at himself.

Giacomo Casanova was ready to face anything.

~o~o~

Rose woke up feeling very groggy. The whole right side of her body was very uncomfortable, as if she was sleeping outside on a metal grating. She lifted her head and tried to open her eyes.

"Rose," she heard Jack's voice and he touched her shoulder.

They were in the TARDIS console room; the Doctor was already at the controls, frowning at the monitor.

"What happened?" She asked, sitting up. Jack looked expectantly at the Doctor for answers.

"What's the last thing you two remember?" He barked at them urgently.

"We were in the library." Jack offered. "The TARDIS started moaning and groaning... I don't remember anything after that until I woke up down here with Rosie." He looked quite chuffed at that turn of events.

The Doctor scowled darkly "I'm guessing the TARDIS returned us to the console room - it's a failsafe in an emergency."

"How long were we out?" Rose asked, now on her feet and stretching her arms over her head.

The Doctor hesitated, momentarily distracted by the tiny glimpse of Rose's midriff, past her loosened dressing gown, as she stretched. He looked back at the monitor, snapping his mouth shut, and focused on the time index in the bottom left of the screen. It seemed to agree with what his internal time sense was telling him. "Forty seven minutes, seventeen point six seconds."

"Oo, very exact... very Spock." Rose teased, biting her tongue.

The Doctor gave her a quelling look. "We need to figure out why the TARDIS brought us back to the control room and what happened in the library."

"Who was that?" Jack asked suddenly.

The Doctor and Rose snapped around to look at him.

"Someone just ran past, along the corridor." he said, pointing to the door that led out to the rest of the ship.

The Doctor and Jack moved toward the door.

"You said no one could get aboard the TARDIS." Rose had a challenging note in her voice as she followed hot on their heels.

"No one can get aboard the TARDIS." The Doctor reaffirmed. "Not from the outside anyway." He added a little quieter.

Jack pointed in the direction he'd seen the intruder go and the three of them set off in pursuit down the passageway.

They passed several points at which the corridors crossed or forked. "Oh they could have gone anywhere in this ridiculous place!" Jack exclaimed.

"We should get back to the console room." The Doctor decided. "We can scan the ship to see what's on board from there. Come on." He set off back the way had come, breaking into a jog.

The Doctor was first to make it back. He stopped dead in the doorway and held out his left arm to keep the other two behind him.

"Hello." He called, his voice filling the console room.

Rose craned her neck to see around the Doctor's broad back. A man that she immediately recognised stepped out from behind the console; the Doctor must have spotted his outline through the time rotor.

Rose let out a small squeak and then a laugh. "Oh my God!" She exclaimed. "What is Captain Kirk doing aboard the TARDIS?"


	4. Chapter 4

AN: Thanks for the guest reviews - lovely to know someone is reading. I think the TARDIS is letting things play out. It's all quite amusing, after all... up to a point.

~o~o~

"How do you know my name?" Kirk asked, he moved towards them, weary but obviously more curious than panicked.

The Doctor took a step forward "I'm the Doctor," He said, "and this is Rose and Jack."

"_Captain_ Jack Harkness." Jack introduced himself, putting emphasis on the word 'Captain'. He stepped around the Doctor, held out his hand and offered his lady killer smile. Well, Rose has assumed it was a lady killer smile - in reality, Jack didn't seem to mind who he aimed it at. She put her hand over her mouth to stifle another giggle. They had established back on Earth that Jack didn't know about Spock, so she had to assume that he had no idea just how ridiculous their current situation was.

"Captain James T. Kirk of the Federation starship Enterprise." He shook Jack's hand. "Now, where am I, and what is the Tardis?"

"Oh," Jack turned to the Doctor, a little cheekiness now in his smile now, "The TARDIS isn't my ship."

"Are you really Captain Kirk?" Rose couldn't help herself. She walked over to him and poked his upper arm. He was indeed solid, warm and seemingly human.

He moved back only a fraction, a little surprised but seeming in no way perturbed by Rose's actions. He gave her an appraising look from her slipper covered feet to the top of her blonde head. He smiled slightly, almost as though he'd forgotten what girls looked like. "Have we met?" He asked, that tiny smile growing just a fraction.

Rose realised that she was in just her pyjamas and felt decidedly uncomfortable for the first time. "No."

She glanced at the Doctor. He had folded his arms and was leaning against one of the coral struts, watching them. "Sorry." He stood up straight, "I forgot my manners. The TARDIS is my ship. It stands for Time and relative dimension in space. Welcome aboard." He grinned, not in the same way Jack had, and stuck out his hand to give Kirk's a good shake.

"How did I get here?" Kirk asked.

"No idea." The Doctor said brightly. He bounded up the gantry to the console with about three long strides.

Something was very wrong. Someone entirely impossible was on board his ship. Someone with a reputation for womanising, and Rose was the only woman for several AUs in any direction. The way Kirk had looked her over had not gone unnoticed by the Doctor. He consoled himself with the small mercy that James T. Kirk was even cheesier than Jack Harkness. Rose was also fully aware of his reputation and his moves, as well documented as they were by 79 episodes of soft focus gazes and stiff shouldered snogs.

"Jack, Rose, gimme a hand up here..."

Jack hurried around behind the Doctor and Rose followed, a bit confused about what she was going to be able to help with. It soon became clear that the doctor wanted them to be able to see what he was doing on the monitor. He taped a few buttons on the keyboard and Rose realised that he was typing them a message.

_I see no reason for Kirk to know he's fictional._

The Doctor then highlighted the text and deleted it all. "Right, let's see if we can't figure out why you're here." He looked hopefully at Kirk, still tapping away at the keys. "That's odd. I'm not reading any life signs on board apart from the three of us."

Jack gave Rose a wide eyed look and mouthed _He's fictional?_

Rose smiled... _Well, have you ever heard of the Federation?_

Jack shrugged.

"You don't really need me for this bit, do ya? I think I'll go put some clothes on." Rose turned around to leave.

"Wait, Rose..." The Doctor stopped what he was doing immediately. "Someone else is on the ship, remember."

Rose spun on the spot, coming all the way back around to face the men standing around the console again.

"Then one of you'd better come with me." She grinned cheekily. "You wouldn't want a damsel in distress to need a Captain to rescue 'er and they're all too busy scannin' for life forms or somethin'."

Jack puffed out his chest. "Say no more," he announced. "Captain Jack Harkness at your disposal. Fully qualified in both dressing and undressing damsels in distress."

"I don't think so." The Doctor said a bit quicker than he would have liked. "You can stay here and keep scanning."

"Look, I might be a very impressive time agent, but I don't know these systems." Jack gestured at the frankly baffling TARDIS controls. "No one knows these systems like you, Doc."

Kirk stepped forward. "I don't mind accompanying Miss..." He gave Rose a questioning look

"Tyler," she said with a small, surprised smile, "Rose Tyler."

"I wouldn't mind ensuring the safety of Miss Tyler." Kirk never took his eyes off Rose.

"I don't know why you're here yet," the Doctor pointed rudely at Kirk, "or who you really are." He added harshly.

Rose gave the Doctor a look that told him he was being an arse. Sod it - he didn't know that this man was really Captain Kirk, in fact the most likely explanation was that he was some kind of alien consciousness impersonating Kirk because the Star Trek records had been open in the library's data banks. Whoever he was, the Doctor wasn't going to trust Rose to his tender care.

And what was with all the "Miss Tyler" stuff? He should remember that Kirk wasn't from the twenty third century at all; he was from the nineteen sixties. Kirk was from the same era as the Police Box that the Doctor's TARDIS favoured so much, not from the Great and Bountiful Human Empire at all.

"What happened from your point of view, anyway?" The Doctor asked Kirk.

"I woke up in what appeared to be a library." Kirk answered. "I tried to raise my ship, but got no response. I thought the best course of action would be to find the command centre."

"You knew you were on a ship?" The Doctor demanded. "Not many libraries have a command centre."

"I've spend enough time in space to know when there are deck plated beneath my feet." Kirk said as if it was the normal thing in the universe.

The Doctor considered him for a moment. "Fair enough," he eventually nodded to Kirk. "You stay here with Jack; we'll get everything figured out once Rose is dressed."

The Doctor took Rose's hand "Come on." His voice was soft again as he pulled her after him.

"Sorry." Rose said, as they walked down the corridor. "I should've just stayed in my pyjamas." She felt silly now for suggesting she went to change when they could all be in danger.

"Nah." The doctor frowned down at her, his expression suddenly caring. "No one should have to face possible danger in their jammies."

"Could be worse, I suppose." Rose tried to lighten the mood that had been gathering in the TARDIS since they had found themselves in the console room.

"How?"  
"Could be wearing someone else's jammies."

The Doctor's laugh was a bark of real amusement, "can't think of anything worse!" He swung their clasped hands happily as they strode down the hall, almost at the door to Rose's room.

"Let me take a quick look around and then I'll leave you to it." The Doctor said when they reached their destination. He turned the doorknob and went inside. The light flickered on above them. The doctor checked behind the door, under her bed and inside the small wardrobe that held the few clothes that she'd brought from home in her duffle bag. Lastly, he popped his head around the door of her en-suite bathroom, checking that it was devoid of intruders. "OK." He announced. "I'll be right outside."

Her bedroom door clicked shut and Rose hastily shimmied out of her pyjama bottoms and yanked on clean knickers and her jeans that had been discarded on the floor the day before. Throwing off her dressing gown and whipping her vest top over her head, she found a clean bra and t-shirt in a pile of clean clothes brought up from the laundry room a couple of adventures back. She rummaged in her wardrobe for a hoodie and zipped it up purposefully. Grabbing her hairbrush she went in the bathroom, glad that she showered before heading along to the library in search of the last Harry Potter book. She tidied her hair, brushed her teeth and put on a tiny bit of makeup - best to be ready for anything.

The Doctor listened to Rose's scrambled efforts to be quick. If he had been in her room he would have reminded her that more haste often meant less speed. Of course, if he had been in there, he probably would have got a slap. He made a bet with himself that she would emerge her from her room wearing jeans and a hoodie top.

The Doctor grinned when she did. He knew if he said anything that she would chastise him for wearing the same jacket over black jeans and a jumper every day. He couldn't blame her, she didn't know just how important that kind of consistency was to him. When you had been known to change your entire body on numerous occasions, the simple clue of clothes helped you remember which one you were in sometimes.

As they approached the console room, Jack was peering down the corridor, looking for them. "I don't think it's a coincidence that Kirk is here after you were watching those..." he thought on his feet, "records of his missions... on the monitor in the library."

"What makes you say that?" The Doctor picked up his pace a little.

"Well, look who else just showed up..." Jack stepped back allowing the Doctor and Rose to pass him in the doorway.

"Giacomo Casanova!" The Doctor announced, laughing and holding out his hand in greeting.

The strikingly handsome younger man took the Doctor's hand and shook it. "Have we met?" His eyes twinkled, eyes that immediately drew Rose in, despite being far too blue to be possible.

"Not yet," the Doctor beamed, "but you're pretty famous."

"I suppose I am." Casanova puffed out his chest like a proud peacock.

"So, it would seem that people from different points in time and space are being brought here." Kirk summarised. "Jack tells me that you three are time travellers - Is there some way that your time machine might be bringing us here?" He thought of the Guardian of Forever, an encounter he tried not to think about as a rule, could this time ship be a sort of reverse version of that?

"I don't think so." The Doctor offered no explanation why not but returned to the readouts on the monitor.

He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his jacket and used it to pull up the information he wanted without having to browse through numerous files. "Aaha!" He announced a moment later. "Look at this... about an hour ago, one of those rock monsters I tried to show you made a run at the TARDIS." He showed a recording of blurry purple shape heading their way on the screen. "That must have been what caused the bang we heard when we were in the library." The doctor kept buzzing with the sonic screwdriver. "There was a power surge after that - the TARDIS tried to channel it through non-essential systems." He grimaced. "I'd stay out of the sauna room if I were you."

Rose hadn't even been aware that there was a sauna on the TARDIS, although her mind did manage to somehow generate a mental image of a sweating Doctor wearing nothing but a white towel around his hips, leaning back on a seat in a room with hideous orange pine walls and ceilings. She shook her head and frowned at the incomprehensible readouts on the monitor.

"It doesn't look like the sauna took the brunt of it." Jack pointed at something on the screen.

"You're right." The Doctor looked up at Jack and then somewhat hesitantly at their two new guests. "It looks like they're the result of a massive power surge and the explosion of a whole tank of Fiction Mist."

"But they're really here." Jack insisted. "They're solid, we've shaken their hands, they've managed to move all around the ship."

"It's a lot of Fiction Mist... and a lot of power." The Doctor shrugged. "Nothing like this has probably ever happened before."

"Are you saying that we're not really here?" Kirk asked.

"I wouldn't say that." The Doctor ran his hand over the short cropped hair of his head. "You're just not the real versions of who you think you are."

He looked braced for an onslaught of protests. Casanova stepped forward, a small frown between his eyebrows. "Are you saying that your technology has created me from the pages of a book?"

"More or less." The Doctor said, not even trying to hide how impressed he was the eighteenth century man.

"And what books tell my story?" He enquired.

"I was reading your autobiography." Jack grinned, "quite the page turner."

"I'll bet." Casanova returned Jack's grin knowingly.

"Doctor, I assume you were reviewing the records of my mission to the space station K7 on the Klingon border?"

"That's right." The Doctor confirmed.

"Hang on." Rose was surprised that she needed to wave her arms in the air to attract the attention of the four men in the room. Two of them, perhaps the most unlikely two, had made some sort of pass at her within recent memory. "Captain Kirk and Casanova are here because you two were reading about them." She reiterated.

"Well, watching." The Doctor grumbled pedantically under his breath.

Rose ignored him. "Hasn't anyone wondered where my Fiction Mist man is?" She stared at the Doctor, her eyebrows up.

"You mean Harry Potter's probably wandering about on the ship?" Jack looked very excited. Rose didn't have time to marvel that the fifty first century man, who had never heard of Star Trek, had read Harry Potter.

"No - Harry's not even bin mentioned yet in the seventh book." Rose chewed her bottom lip, trying to communicate the weight of the situation to her two travelling companions.

"Who were you reading about, Rose?" The Doctor asked, his voice was low and serious all of a sudden.

"Well, they were at a meeting at Malfoy Manor... Vo-"

The Doctor clapped his hand over Rose's mouth. "Don't say it." He barked.


End file.
